Beckham game firm calls in receivers
(thanks muff) is the BBC news article with the latest bad news for embattled
game developer Rage Software. The article details the company's financial woes
(story), and goes on to offer this grim prognosis:

The
software company that makes the David Beckham Soccer Game has collapsed, with
the loss of 77 jobs.

Receivers have been appointed by Liverpool-based computer game firm Rage
Software, ending hopes that a rescue package could be put together.

The Liverpool-based firm is now likely to be broken up, and any new games it is
working on sold off.

The future of the remaining 85 staff will depend on the sale of the intellectual
property rights of games currently in development.

The patch rift was over getting paid for the job, RtW the developer was happy to fix and improve Mobile Forces and stated repeatedly on the forum that this was the issue, but couldn't create a further patch without getting paid for it - whole heap of stuff went one, Essentially they did what they were paid for and I think MF is a good fun game, there are issues with the game and a further patch would have really sorted things out. (they released one patch update which addressed some issues)

RtW are a small developer (a startup, originally Rage Dundee) - creating a patch costs money in dev time and if no-one is going to pay for it i.e. the publisher then there wasn't much they could really do - sadly.

There is whole threads dedicated to the matter on the official MF community forums over @ www.mobileforces.org with posts from the dev team - shame for the game, but I can totally see where they are coming from.

FWIW - the community is pretty small, although cool & friendly. If ppl have the game they should check it out. One main member (a moderator) released a mutator addressing some of the weapon balancing issues and also released a Linux hack to run it on that OS (instead of its native Win32) so there is some community support if not from the publisher

"The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering - Bruce Lee"

===B: Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?

P: I think so, Brain, but where are we going to find a duck and a hose at this hour?